Gregor Samsa bir sabah rahatsızlık verici rüyalarından uyandığında, kendini yatağında ucube bir haşereye dönüşmüş halde buldu...
Die Verwandlung - Franz Kafka
Dün gece alkışlarla Halaskargazi caddesinden Taksim'e yürümeye çalışan 10.000'lerce vatandaşını iki yönden sıkıştırarak üzerlerine kaçacak yer bırakmadan gaz sıkan bu devlet, bu hükümet, bu adalet, bu asayiş, bu medya beni bir Rüya'dan uyandırdı:
Bu firavun ve yalakalarının gözünde hepimiz birer Gregor Samsa'yız.
Genelkurmay'ın direktifi ile Mehmet Ali Birant'ı servis haberlerle bir anda terörist ilan eden basından ne kadar midem kalktıysa alkol yasaklarının gündemde olduğu günlerde aşağıdaki haberi (http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/25445738) manşet geçen NTV de o kadar midemi kaldırdı:
Birisi içki masasında bir cinayeti itiraf ediyor. Ne suç işlenirken, ne azmettirilirken içki yok işin içinde. 4 Milyarlık Galataport ihalesini 700 milyon dolara alan bir holdingin haber portalı ise bu haberin Türkiye'ye sunduğu en önemli 8 haberden biri olduğunu düşünüyor.
Aklıma ne geldi:
VITO CORLEONE (after Bonasera kisses his hand)
Some day, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But uh,
until that day -- accept this justice as a gift on my daughter's wedding day.
Contrary to what creationists want you to think (Banana: The Atheists' Nightmare), the delicious starch cubes once looked like this:
Thanks to a thousand years of best Genetic Modification by small farmers, the seeds were gone. As a result, all the bananas you eat are more or less the fruits of the same plants, which have been asexually produced over and over again.
I came across a similar case of wild origins of a well-known European plant in my recent visit to Erzurum. Favorite of pie-makers across the western world, Rhubarb looks clean and nicely shaped like this:
Virtually unknown in western Turkey, the wild cousin, or perhaps ancestor of Rhubarb is known as Işgın in Eastern Turkey:
To close the this curious circle, the Wild Rhubarb is known as the Mountain Banana in Eastern Turkey.
a book which has, over the years, seemed to subtly presage the state of
America in a slightly different way every decade; a book which Luhrmann
has here reduced to the depth of blingy video game.
For a more respectful homage to F. Scott Fitzgerald and cinema here's The Ballad of a Thin Man from I'm Not There with Cate Blanchete as Dylan:
German Music has a tradition of hitting the perfect balance between disillusionment, cynicism and that weird hope that follows from realizing that it does not matter all that much. Perhaps this goes back to Nietzsche, I am not sure.
Jetzt! was a seminal German Indie-Rock band that linked historically the experimental revolution of the Neue Deutsche Welle and the Hamburger Indie-Rock revival of the 90s. Geographically it linked the jingle-jangle sound of the British music to German Music.
The song "Kommst du mit in den Alltag" has recently became my 30-year-old blues anthem. Since I could not find any English translations of the lyrics, I thought I'd better share this German gem with English speakers:
once you told me,
you'd leave this city,
the life in the city,
just made you weary,
you were never there,
where your dreams are,
you may not yet know where,
but here are they not for sure...
Is this all, what life has to offer:
Care to join the dullness?
Is this all, what life has to offer:
Care to join the dullness?
Is this all, what life has to offer:
Care to join the dullness?
can you still recall,
under the old bridge,
we made a promise,
that we would be different from all the others,
the others in their offices,
the others in the buses 6am,
carriaged to their offices.
everything looked so simple back then,
when we knew nothing.
Is this all, what life has to offer:
Care to join the dullness?
Is this all, what life has to offer:
Care to join the dullness?
Is this all, what life has to offer:
Care to join the dullness?
Sometimes, when you tenderly,
lean you head next to mine,
and we look deep deep into our eyes,
then i know what's it about,
then i know where i belong,
and I think to myself:
Death to the consequences,
Long live tenderness!
Death to the consequences,
Long live tenderness!
Death to the consequences,
Long live tenderness!
Death to the consequences,
Long live tenderness!
Death to the consequences,
Long live tenderness!
